Bronx Calling features work by New York-area emerging artists who have participated in The Bronx Museum of the Arts Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) program in the last two years. Organized by Gabriel de Guzman, Wave Hill Curator of Visual Arts; Elizabeth M. Grady, guest curator; and Lia Zaaloff, Bronx Museum Curator, the exhibition is presented concurrently at The Bronx Museum, Wave Hill and 1285 Avenue of the Americas Art Gallery.

2 of a kind is a group show consisting of eight pairs of collaborating artist. The exhibitions focus is to review the goals of the gallery through ideas of collaboration. The significance of collaboration lies in the process where two or more people work together to realize shared goals. Each pair of artists were asked to submit two collaborative pieces to be displayed during the exhibition. In addition to the work shown in the gallery, LVL3 will also be premiering a permanent mural installation on the back of the building by Chicago-based artists Ryan Travis Christian and Mike Paro; this mural was partially funded by the Covenant Project Grant. 2 of a kind looks at the rich history of the Chicago arts community and how it continues to be an innovative place for growth and creativity.

The Bronx Museum of the Arts
1040 Grand Concourse at 165th St, Bronx, New York 10456

Bronx Calling: The Second AIM Biennial will feature the work of seventy-three emerging artists who participated in the Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) program (classes of 2012 and 2013). The exhibition will be presented at three locations and will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue. Organized by curators Gabriel de Guzman, Elizabeth M. Grady, and Lia Zaaloff.

WEIRD DUDE ENERGY is a survey of artist dudes who cultivate the intersection of elegance and Dudeliness. Coursing between the tiles of the weight room’s floor and pulling the foam through a beer bong’s tube there is an energy. In WEIRD DUDE ENERGY an unease transmits through the works like the dissonant proportions cursing the limbs of pubescent boys. Stained with the trauma of puberty WEIRD DUDE ENERGY strikes a balance between restraint and total release. GDBD is drawn to the complicated and embarrassing gestures of Dudehood. Bask in the glory of this Dudery and join GDBD in inviting the WEIRD DUDE ENERGY to wash over us like an enveloping mist of AXE. Can you abide?

This video screening is part of the 2013 Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival. Spatial Body includes work that explores the relationship between the body and environment, both natural and constructed. The performance videos can be seen as a direct response to the artists’ surroundings; the site ignites an action that creates an instant dialog between the body and space. Spatial Body features work by Michael & Alan Fleming, Synchrodogs, Nabi Nara, and Lionel Cruet.

Perambulant
Alan and Michael Fleming will present a series of architectural interventions using their bodies. Incorporating different bodily forms into the architectural facades of the Lower East Side, the artist duo will act as living ornaments on the surface of the building’s exterior. Through these various interventionist actions they hope to re-examine the body as object, structure, or support.

*We will be performing a durational peice throughout the evening between other performance events*

"Bring on 2012 with its four horsemen and cult sacrifices. If this is the last of the great mortality myths, let’s push it to a real scorched earth explosion. We bring you a new spin on an old-school anthem: Push it. Real. Good. Reckoning with the end of the world-as-we-know-it, we are faced with the competing impulses of fight or flight. It’s time to push it past the limits of what we know and challenge our bodies and minds to test the boundaries of form and action. We’re in genre-bending terrain. Performance is happening everywhere, and as a result critical questions are emerging about the future of live work. What is the measurement of discipline and energy that is necessary for our work? How do we measure value in the midst of economic ruin? We have to keep pushing with and against these questions to keep going and keep making it happen. Listen up! We’re talking about aesthetic polyamory. We present dance, sound, writing, visual art, installation and video as autonomous forms with tendencies toward intermingling. Not just intermingling, but gettin’ up in it. Not just gettin’ up in it, but going hog wild. Push it. Real. Good."
-MR Festival Curators: Eleanor, Enrico, Marissa, Neal

ACRE and HAPPY COLLABORATIONISTS are pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Alan and Michael Fleming. Known for their physical and often playful approach to making art, in this exhibition the Flemings explore ways we relate to the world through our bodies. Using themselves as a tool for measurement and comparison, the work on display reveals a phenomenological investigation of space, place and experience.

This exhibition will include new photography and video work made by the Fleming brothers over the past year. Being shown for the first time in the United States, one of the central works on display for this exhibition is a video shot on location in Denmark. Returning to their embodied practice of relating to architectural spaces, the artists present us with a unique glimpse of various engagements with buildings and sites around Copenhagen. As an international hub for architecture and design, the city provides a dynamic backdrop for the Flemings’ performative interventions.

Alan and Michael Fleming are twin brothers who have been making art together over the past 7 years. They attended graduate school as a collaborative and each received an MFA in Studio from the Performance Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010.
Their work ranges from performance, to video, to sculpture. Their recent solo exhibition, GAME ON, at threewalls presented a poignant and humorous body of work that the artists made while living apart for a year. In 2012 they were selected for the Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) Program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts and as a result their work will be included in the 2013 Bronx Biennial. Currently, they are both based in Brooklyn.

GAME ON is a solo exhibition of our collaborative work, which is part of the ThreewallsSOLO program. Part of the exhibition will be comprised of work that we made while living apart in two different cities for the past year (while Alan was living in New York and Michael was living in Chicago). These works include reflections on distance, communication, "psychic” games, material trace of collaboration, etc. and the rest of the exhibition will include new work that we have been making since reuniting in New York after our temporary hiatus.

We were selected to participate in the winter/spring 2012 session of AIM and as a result our work will be included in the 2013 Bronx Biennial.

"The Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) program was established in 1980 with the goals of providing networking opportunities for emerging artists residing in the New York metropolitan area and of introducing their work to a greater audience. Every year a panel of five arts professionals is assembled by the Bronx Museum to select thirty-six artists to participate in AIM. The program comprises a series of thirteen weekly seminars. AIM sessions are led by a faculty of specialists and address areas of practical concern to artists including: career management and gallery representation; exhibition and public art opportunities; grant writing, copyright law, and marketing. AIM culminates with a biannual exhibition organized by a team of guest curators, and an accompanying catalogue."

"Independent exhibition spaces and self-organized organizations often
operate as exchanging networks and interactive entities rather than
established rooms – and leave the gallery. The fair will present
initiatives concerned with the intersection of art, design and
architecture spanning over participatory, location- and
situation-specific projects. Alt_cph11 Encounters will focus on public space and the activity of the individual in the local environment in relation to the global.
The program will include presentations by all participants, projects and
activities in the local environment around The Factory as well as
debates and events questioning the relationship between space and
action, art and life.

Our Schedule at the Fair:
We will have an exhibition booth on display for the duration of the art fair under the name Spatial Interventions.
Performance- "Objects and Extensions" 5:15pm, Friday, Sept 16th and 6:15pm, Saturday, Sept 17th
Lecture- "Spatial Interventions" 6:45pm, Saturday, Sept 17th

August

For the month of August we will be at the ACRE (Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions) Residency.
Keep an eye out for our solo exhibition with ACRE in the coming year!

"The Joke is Irresistible challenges various tropes of masculinity and the gendered gaze. By borrowing from the feminist tradition and applying the same tools to questions of masculinity, an area that remains largely unexplored in gender studies scholarship, some featured artists parody stereotypes of masculinity while others literalize them. All are serious considerations of what it means to engender masculinity in a way that broadens how we understand gendered associations in the world around us. Curated by Joe Iverson (MA 2011), curatorial assistant, Department of Exhibitions. Artists include: Christopher Bradley, Andy Cahill, Jason Conny, Anthony Creedin, Alan and Michael Fleming, Joe Grimm, Millie Kapp and Isabella Ng, Mik Kastner, and Janet Lin."

"This exhibition features new work created by artists in Summer Studio—a residency program that turned the Sullivan Galleries into a site of making, and brought together artists Chicago and beyond into a temporary creative community. The studio offers artists a time to take stock of things a shift direction, carry out plans long dreamed about and make them real, and move through the sometimes circuitous modes of conversation and coexistence to find a personal path. Now invited to open their processes for public engagement, the outcomes—the products of their summer residency in Sullivan—are on view here."

"This exhibition brings together artists who attempt to make material the complicated, fractured, or multiple identities of themselves or others. Their strategies test the potential of text, object, act, symbol, pattern etc. to render a coherent identity legible to the viewer, or to resolve or solidify their own identities in the process. Through varying approaches, these artists challenge the boundaries and possibilities of their chosen media, and their results suggest various conclusions to the question of how complex or unresolved identities are constructed in the process of making."

August 2-22

We were Artists-in-Residence at the Summer Studio Exhibition at the Sullivan Galleries until the end of August. We used this time to create new work, develop current projects and get to know the community of other artists working at the gallery for the summer. The work we created will be on display for the Product in Process: Work from Summer Studio Exhibition.

June 9-July 25

Alan attended the American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina this summer. He experienced dance companies from around the world, learned modern dance technique from the top teachers and choreographers, as well as crafted and performed his own choreography.

We will be performing at the first weekend of DIRT: Land/Use festival. An amazing three weekends of performance, dance, readings and videos about how we shape the land and how the land shapes us. Curated by Deke Weaver.

"Feng Shui is an exhibition of new photography, performance and video work by Alan and Michael Fleming. This exhibition will explore themes of balance and harmony in the domestic setting. Feng Shui is part of a larger curatorial project initiated by Tang Zehui titled Artists and Residents."

Artists and Residents is a series of art projects taking place at private homes in Chicago. As a critical response to the current proliferation of apartment galleries in Chicago, Artists and Residents intends to expand the "social circles" of apartment gallery without losing its sense of intimacy by having Chicago residents of various backgrounds and professions as the hosts for the projects. Through these exhibitions, the concept of apartment gallery is transformed from a fixed site associated with an artist or curator's home to a discursive arena, stretching over the city from Uptown to Hyde Park, from Lakeview to Garfield Park. Moreover, in these exhibitions there will not be any pre-made art to be brought to the house. Instead, all works will be conceptualized from the house in response to the space and the everyday life happening inside.

Feng Shui is on view until March 28th, by appointment by contacting Brittany:412-613-0993

2009 RECAP

December 12

We performed a response to Chryssa Tsampazi's piece IN OR OUT- A 25 Minute Activity With Children at the Betty Rymer Gallery for the Exhibition The Embedded Flaw

Andrea Miller of Gallim Dance invited us to perform at SPORTMAX SoHo in conjunction with a sound installation by Sebastien Agneessens and Kyle Fischer.

"When Sebastien Agneessens and Kyle Fischer, who are both artists and musicians, collaborated with Sportmax for a sound installation it was to highlight the value of ethno-diversity in a modern world defined by rapid globalization." - FashionWindows

In addition to a performance by Gallim Dance, we performed a piece titled Objects and Extensions

"This opportunity shop located at 1613 E. 55th Street is a short term, spontaneous pilot project for what we hope will become a series of exhibitions taking place in spaces in transition throughout Hyde Park and the south side of Chicago. By using vacant spaces with the cooperation of the owners for exhibitions, we can economize on overhead and also bring attention to unused urban space." -Home Gallery

We performed a piece called Negotiations on Friday Nov 20 (just before 7pm) outside of the Chicago Cultural Center for the New Blood III Performance Festival. The three-evening festival featured new performances by School of the Art Institute of Chicago students who blur the boundaries between theater, movement, and the visual arts.

We also performed a durational piece, Peripheral Presence, in collaboration with Stephanie Bailey, on Sunday Nov 22 at 6pm in the Chicago Cultural Center.

October 1

Excerpts of our video work were on TV this past week for the Illinois Filmmakers Documentary and can be viewed online here. Our interview and work is about 30 minutes into the program.

We performed a new work titled "Measurements" at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago BFA Fashion Show and THE WALK: An Extraordinary Evening of Fashion + Art Honoring Maria Pinto, as part of a series of curated performance interruptions throughout the events.

We performed in Millie Kapp and Isabella Ng's piece "a bob ross song, an orsen welles trick" for Version Fest 09. Isabella Ng and Millie Kapp investigate the performative capabilities of the Tennis Court on 29th and Halsted, examining how this space in particular operates as a highly theatrical platform with physical directives, divisions, and information embedded in the space. Using six live bodies, they will investigate the idea of the “magic show” as the ultimate performative illusion.

March 28

LIVE ART LIVE ART LIVE ART
AN AESTHETIC EXPERIMENT IN EPHEMERAL ART curated by Jean Kang
SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 2009, 2-8 PM

This second annual event features new time-based works by School of the Art Institute of Chicago students that blur the boundaries between theatre, movement, audio, video, and the visual arts. Performances at Links Hall begin at 9pm Friday and Saturday, following the opening of an exhibition of 60 SAIC undergraduate students' work at Sullivan Galleries, 33 S. State Street, 7th floor.

We will be presenting a performance called "Configurations" on Saturday at 9pm and will also be performing in a group piece on Sunday at 7pm called "The Body Parlor" created by James Kubie and Katrina Erickson.

October 10

We will be involved in an exclusive group show at the Foundry Art Centre in St. Charles, Missouri titled "International Video". This is an exhibition of international video work by the three winners of the 2006 "Group 3 Award". We won this award in 2006 for our video "Defining the Frame". The opening will be Friday October 10, 2008: 6-9pm in Gallery III of the Foundry Art Centre.

June 4-6

This summer we went to Glasgow, Scotland to participate in a live art/performance project called "Here Now, There Now " which included text works and performances that explore the space between departure and destination. Devised by Pernille Spence, Here Now, There Now is the culmination of a Scottish Arts Council Creative Scotland Award 2006. The festival consisted of three days of continuous performance and alterations of the landscape by several different artists. The only real "audience" was the passengers on the train so that the performances themselves had to be experienced as scattered moments during travel. More information about this project can be found on the website as well as a documentary about the project coming soon.

We were invited out to participate as performers in Anthony Schrag's performance concept for this project. It was wonderful to go back to Scotland and see old friends.

June 7

The day after the "Here Now, There Now " project there was also a performance/live art symposium at InterMedia in The Center for Contemporary Arts Glasgow titled "its not hard (to say goodbye)". At this symposium we presented "Movement Piece #2", a continuation of a site-specific piece we performed in Chicago last fall. This symposium was in conjunction with a release party for Anthony Schrag's new live art publication:

"For six months, artist Anthony Schrag has been toiling away on a wee publication that looks at Live Art in all its various forms, its beautiful functions and its ugly conundrums. Including writers such as John Calutt, Ruth Barker, and Mary Patterson (to name but a few!) the book takes its inspiration from the programme of eight live art experiments Anthony curated at InterMedia in 2007 (entitled “its not hard”), and looks backwards at these works, examining them and the genre as a whole, but also looks at current critical dialogues, the structures that are needed for support and future exciting projects."

May 10-17

Our video "Vertical Tactics" was shown as part of the screening series "The Show Starts on the Sidewalk", part of the "Interrupt! Intervene! Art as Social Practice" conference at UC Santa Cruz (taking place May 15-17 2008). "The Show Starts on the Sidewalk" featured work that either documented public intervention or was an intervention in itself.
Screenings took place in outdoor locations in public places in San Francisco, San Jose, and Santa Cruz. These films considered relational aesthetics, interventions, Situationist practices and Fluxus style events.

February 28-March 22-

The CSV Cultural Center in New York recently presented our work in the "URBANSPACE" photo exhibition. "URBANSPACE" is a photographic project distributed in the agile form of a multimedia projection. Focusing on the aesthetics of large urban centers as a theme, URBANSPACE unites internationally selected works
and is hosted in the virtual galleries of WOOLOO.ORG. CSV is at 107 Suffolk Street, New York, NY 10002.

The first edition of "URBANSPACE" (2007)--a projection of 530 images from over 23 countries-- premiered in Rio de Janeiro at the media arts foundation, Oi Futuro. Simultaneous projections were also made in New Life Shop, the Berlin headquarters of WOOLOO.ORG. These projections have since been screened in ECCO during Brasilia's FotoArte, Sao Paulo's Galeria Vermelho, as well as showings during Fotopub07 in Slovenia.

January 2-9-

Great news to report for January, our video series"At Rest: The Body in Architecture" won an award at an International festival! We won the "performing" section of the International Festival of Cinematography “Kinolevchyk Festival” at the Idea Museum in Lviv, Ukraine.

Our video "Defining the Frame" was shown during the “DRIP Film and Video Festival” in the fall of 2007 in California, Virginia, New York and Illinois. The festival had its first screening at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York on September 5th.

DRIP is an annual festival of student video, animation, film and moving-image work selected from submissions from the undergraduates of California College of the Arts, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, The School of Art+Design at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) and the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. Guest curator Steve Seid (Pacific Film Archive) has selected 60 minutes of work.

From October 26-November 19 we were in Glasgow, Scotland making art and visiting Jess Ferrone. We planned to treat our time there like a DIY artist residency, which ended up working out very well. We met up with a live art/performance artist named Anthony Schrag who was very generous and allowed us to use his artist residency space at CCA:The Center for Contemporary Art. We got to meet some really great people and see some really great art while we were there. We did some collaborative work with Anthony and on our own. We also had time to play around the city a lot and see some amazing things. We will be posting new video work and possibly some photographs over the next month. It was a great trip and very productive.

On October 12 we presented a collaborative performance with Thomas Albrecht titled "Believe Don't" at "Time and Again: A Night of Events". It was a one night exhibition of live performance and multi-media art at the The Springer Cultural Center in Champaign, IL. Images can be seen in the performance section.

On October 6-7 we presented a live performance titled "Movement Piece # 1" as part of the "Industrial Corridors: Empty Lot Performance Project" in Chicago.
Live theatre, dance, and performances designed to take place in vacant and abandoned lots, parks, parking lots, and other outdoor, undeveloped spaces around the city of Chicago.

This summer our work was shown at the “URBAN SPACE” exhibition as part of FotoRio 2007. The work was projected outside on buildings and was shown at both Oi Futuro in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and New Life Shop in Berlin, Germany.

Our video "At Rest: The Body in Architecture" was shown at the “Architectural Film Fest” organized by BLDGBLOG and Materials & Applications as part of the "Silver Lake Film Festival" at The Wind Tunnel in Pasadena, CA. The festival took place on May 22nd, 2007.

In March we presented our senior thesis exhibition titled “Spatial Interventions”. It was installed in The Atrium of Temple Buell Hall at UIUC, Champaign, IL. The show ran from March 26-April 6, 2007 and was a huge success. Many friends and family members were there to see what we have been up to over the past few years. Thank you to everyone who came out to support us.